the river, the volume of which, during the eruption, was doubled. But one eruption of this geyser was observed. Its periodic turns were not, therefore, determined. Another large crater close by has several orifices, and, with ten small jets surrounding it, formed, probably, one connected system. The hill built up by this group covers an acre of ground, and is thirty feet in height."

Lieutenant Barlow.

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY.

1. ON the 7th of August, after four days' hard travel from San Francisco, we galloped out of the pine-woods, dismounted, stood upon the rocky precipice of Inspiration Point, and looked down into Yosemite as one from a housetop looks down into his garden, or as he would view the interior of some stupendous, roofless cathedral from the top of one of its towering walls. In the distance, across the gorge, were snow-streaked mountains. Right under us was the narrow, winding basin of meadow, grove, and shining river, shut in by granite walls from two thousand to five thousand feet high-walls with immense turrets of bare rock, walls so upright and perfect that an expert cragman can climb out of the valley at only three or four points.

2. Flinging a pebble from the rock upon which we stood, and looking over the brink, I saw it fall more than half a mile before striking. Glancing across the narrow, profound chasm, I surveyed an unbroken, seamless wall of granite, two thirds of a mile high, and more than perpendicular, the top projecting one hundred and fifty feet over the base. Turning toward the upper end of the valley, I

beheld a half-dome of rock, one mile high, and on its summit a solitary gigantic cedar, appearing like the merest twig. Originally a vast granite mountain, it was riven from top to bottom by some ancient convulsion, which cleft asunder the everlasting hills and rent the great globe itself.

3. The measureless inclosing walls, with these leading towers and turrets, gray, brown, and white rock, darkly veined from summit to base with streaks and ribbons of falling water; hills, almost upright, yet studded with tenacious firs and cedars; and the deep-down level floor of grass, with its thread of river and pygmy trees-all burst upon me at once. Nature had lifted her curtain to reveal the vast and the infinite. It elicited no adjectives, no exclamations. With bewildering sense of divine power and human littleness, I could only gaze in silence, till the view strained my brain and pained my eyes, compelling me to turn away and rest from its oppressive magnitude.

4. Riding for two hours, down, down, among sharp rocks and dizzy zigzags, where the five ladies of our party found it difficult to keep in their saddles, and narrowly escaped pitching over their horses' heads, we were in the valley, entering by the Mariposa trail. The length of the valley or cleft is nine miles; its average width three. fourths of a mile. The following dimensions are in feet:

Average width of Merced River...

69

Height of Yosemite Falls (Upper, 1,600; Rapids, 434;

Lower, 600).....

2,634

Width of these falls at upper summit in August..

15

5. The rock mountains are the great feature; indeed, they are Yosemite. The nine granite walls, which range in altitude from three to six thousand feet, are the most striking examples on the globe of the masonry of nature. Their dimensions are so vast that they utterly outrun our ordinary standards of comparison. One might as well be told of a wall, upright like the side of a house for ten thousand miles, as for two thirds of one mile. When we speak of a giant twenty-five feet high, it conveys some definite impression; but to tell of one three thousand feet high, would only bewilder, and convey no meaning whatever. So, at first, these stupendous walls painfully confuse the mind. By degrees, day after day, the sight of them clears it, until, at last, one receives a just impression of their solemn immensity.

6. Cathedral Rocks have two turrets, and look like some Titanic religious pile. Sentinel towers alone, grand and hoary. The South Dome, a mile high, is really a semi-dome. Cleft from top to bottom, one half of it went on the other side of the chasm and disappeared, when the great mountains were rent in twain. The gigantic North Dome is as round and perfect as the cupola of the national Capitol. Three Brothers is a triple-pointed mass of solid granite. All these rocks, and scores of lesser ones, which would be noticeable anywhere else in the world, exhibit vegetation. Hardy cedars, thrusting roots into imperceptible crevices of their upright sides, apparently growing out of unbroken stone, have braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze.

7. El Capitan is grandest of all. No tuft of beard

shades or fringes its closely shaven face. No tenacious vine even can fasten its tendrils to climb that smooth, seamless, stupendous wall. There it will stand-grandeur, massive

Yosemite Valley.

Its Indian name is Tu-toch-ah-nu-lah.

heat. Both this and the Spanish word signify "the Leader," but were applied in the sense of the Supreme Being. One noble mountain most appropriately commemorates Thomas Star King. Another, immediately in the rear of Hutchings's, our party found nameless, and, except the Speaker himself, unanimously voted to christen it Mount Colfax.

8. Yet Yosemite is the loftiest water-fall in the world. Think of a cataract, or cascade, of half a mile with only a single break! It is sixteen times higher than Niagara. We did not climb to the rapids and foot of the Upper Fall; that is difficult, hazardous, and exhausting. Nor did we go to the extreme summit; that requires a circuitous ride of twenty-five miles out of the valley. But we spent much time at the base of the Lower Fall, shut in by towering walls of dark granite.

9. Much of the water turns to mist before reaching the bottom; yet looking up from under it the volume seems great. Six hundred feet above, a body of ragged, snowy foam, with disheveled tresses, rushes over the brink, and comes singing down in slender column, swayed to and fro by the wind like a long strand of lace. For four hundred feet the descent is unruffled; then striking a broad, inclining rock, like the roof of a house, the water spreads over it, a thin, shining, transparent apron, fringed with delicate gauze, and glides swiftly to the bottom. By moonlight the whole looks like a long, white ribbon, hanging against the brown wall, with its lower end widening and unraveled.

10. Bridal-Veil Fall, unbroken, much narrower, and softened by a delicate mist which half hides it, is a strip of white, fluttering foam, which the wind swings like a silken pendulum. It is spanned by a rainbow; and at some points the thin, glass-like sheet reveals every hue of the wall behind it. Before reaching the end of its long de